A new report further highlights why anyone involved in asbestos litigation should be signing up to attend Lynnsey Perrin’s June 19 seminar in Chicago on the latest science and numbers on lung cancers and mesotheliomas. Yours truly is once of the conference co-chairs, as are Christian Hartley (a plaintiff’s lawyer for anyone who does not know him) and Al Parnell (a defense lawyer for anyone who does not know him). (The fact that Christian and I share the same last name is simply a coincidence, we are not related, to our knowledge.)
The new report is NERA’s annual asbestos litigation snapshot report created from looking at SEC reserving documents related to asbestos litigation defendants. The report’s value is sometimes debated because of the limitations of the source data. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see what NERA sees. Some the report’s comments relate to increases in claims involving malignancies. While NERA notes that malignancy claiming "more than doubled" (based on the limited data), NERA does not tightly tie the increase to increasing lung cancer claims. It is, however, intuitive to observe that the increase iin malignancy claiming coincides with increasing lung cancer claiming. As previously described, asbestos lung cancer claims in 2012 set a new record as lung cancer claims comprised 51% of the new case filings in Madison County, Illinois. That result fits with increasing marketing seeking lung cancer claimants. And all of those facts are part of why the Perrin conference is tightly focused on lung claims, stunning new lung cancer science, and brand new developments in mesothelioma science.
Set out below are some key quotes from NERA’s report, as to filings of malignancy cases:
"In 2008, only 11% of pending claims were malignant claims. By 2012, the percent of active malignant claims more than doubled, with 23% of the pending claims alleging a malignant disease.
Moreover, as noted above, a few companies did report the disease mix of their pending claims. For these defendants, the mix of claims has been shifting toward more malignant diseases recently."
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